


How Much

by radbackflips



Series: X marks the [2]
Category: DCU (Animated), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Batfamily Feels, Gen, Jason Todd is Red X, New 52, dimension hopping, jason doesn't do the logic thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radbackflips/pseuds/radbackflips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason’s not a thief. He’s not. It’s just, everything he does seems to contradict that fact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. How Much Do You Want It

**TheGreatControlFreak: u sure you’re not a titan?  
**

**Under_The_Hood: Pretty sure, yeah  
**

**TheGreatControlFreak: before i give you this you have to swear you’ll ONLY use it for evil**  
 **TheGreatControlFreak: and also, if you pull this off and beat the titans you have to say i helped you**  
 **TheGreatControlFreak: because its totally only because of me you could do this**  
 **TheGreatControlFreak: i'm like, your master goda, my young nadawan**

**Under_The_Hood: You don’t get out much, do you  
**

**TheGreatControlFreak: whatever you’re totally sunk without me  
**

**Under_The_Hood: Sadly true. Tower blueprints/codes appreciated**  
 **Under_The_Hood: If I’m caught I will definitely be telling them you’re responsible**  
 **Under_The_Hood: I’ll point them right at you**

**TheGreatControlFreak: just so we’ve got that clear**  
 **TheGreatControlFreak: wait what’s your villain name? so i know who to look out for?**

**Under_The_Hood: Red X  
**

**TheGreatControlFreak: hey that’s a pretty cool name come up with it yourself?  
**

_Under_The_Hood has disconnected_ **  
**

**TheGreatControlFreak: WAIT WHAT**

 

Jason wasn't a thief. It just wasn't shit he did anymore, considering that a) stealing under the Bat got you grounded and scowled at and b) stealing under Ducra got you one hit KO'd so hard it’d leave a dent in your skull. It was a road he hadn't strayed down for years, but not an impossible one - he had been pretty good at it when he was still a street brat. Well, he'd been okay at it. Well, _he'd done it_ and only got caught and beaten up a couple of times.

In short, it had been years. He was rusty as hell. He had no idea what he was doing.

This was, naturally, why Jason found himself heading out to Titans’ Tower the very next day with the express intention of stealing the Red X suit.

He stared up at the tower and tried to ignore the nausea building up from trying to stand still on a boat during a particularly choppy day at sea with absolutely no clue why he was there. He wasn't the fucking Batman. There was basically nothing he could use to his advantage. If he had resources, sure, he could go the whole shebang with the ninja-bat tools and hacking into the mainframe, but he literally had only the clothes on his back, some seriously dodgy back-alley tech and a pair of swords that only worked 'in the presence of pure evil' - useless, ‘cause in the land of twinky justice that wasn't going to be anywhere nearby. That, and the blueprints he'd gotten off Control Freak _just_ by implying he was going to dick over the Titans.

Meaning basically _anyone_ could get those blueprints if they knew who to ask.

He wondered if this world’s Batman knew the kind of goof-ups this Robin was letting go unfettered. He was probably very ashamed, which was likely why there was a Robin in Gotham, and _this_ Robin had been banished to Jump City.

Jason left the boat at an obscure edge of the island, concealed by the foliage, and set his vaguely-resembling-a-plan into motion.

 

It occurred to him half an hour later that he may have gravely overestimated Titans' Tower. The place reeked of Batman's paranoia, but if you knew what you were doing it was terrifyingly easy to navigate. The Titans were screwed, seriously, a toddler could break into their tower. Hell, aim a rocket launcher at the giant conspicuous T built into an island. Why hadn't anyone done that? Why were these people still alive? How could they not have been taken down by now? No wonder villains kept breaking in when the Titans' were away - their entire security system hinged on the fact that people would trip over their laser lights and set off the alarms. Jason literally waltzed right in.

 _Literally_. He used the system override he’d wheedled out of Control Freak to disable security and just strolled in the front door.

And that was another thing. The Titans were idiots, sure, but the _villains_? Was he supposed to believe that Control Freak was actually one of their greatest threats or something? He couldn’t really make any judgements based on what he’d got from the guy, but even he was pretty sure most of the big bads weren’t trying to re-establish colonial America in the name of England (didn’t they just argue over the internet now?), or… well, as far as he could tell Gizmo was eight. Why were the heroes beating up an eight year old? What was he doing, holding up candy stores with a plastic gun?

Out of a mixture of pure curiosity and a severe lack of any kind of self-restraint, Jason ended up in Robin's room first instead of the vault. Batman’s paranoia was showing again, because without the override he’d have had to manually break into Robin’s room by a means he just didn’t have the time or tools for. It was one of those things that needed a passcode, eye and print scans in a particular order, and Jason briefly wondered just what happened when Robin tried to go to bed half-asleep and got it wrong. Got zapped, probably. Jason snickered under his breath.

Robin’s room was depressing, Spartan-as-hell and barely lived in. Actually, it looked like something Batman would operate out of, if he operated above ground. It sort of added weight to his theory that there were and had been several Robins, and this was some new one, because Jason usually kept some vague sense of order, and Dick just flung his stuff at the walls.

Jason’s fists clenched and he held back a growl. _Fucking replacement Robin_. Who the hell was this guy anyway? What gave him the _right_ to just _walk on in_ and take his place by Bruce’s side -

And as for that _Other Replacement Robin_ in Gotham -

He wanted to start smashing things, but he couldn’t afford to leave a trail. Anyone trained by Bruce would be anal to the point of physical pain and while all security was completely disabled, he didn’t really need to leave around any clues.

Still.

Jason quickly weighed his options and pulled open a drawer before he could change his mind. Bat-training dictating absolute stealth aside, it wasn’t really the end of the world if they figured out who he was. Might even give the Replacement a heart attack. Wouldn’t that be a laugh.

The corner of some kind of poster poked out of the drawer and Jason stopped. Oh.

_Oh._

That was a poster from Haley’s circus. And even though it was folded, he could still see the start of the words _Fly_ and _Gra_ _,_ and suddenly Jason knew exactly whose room he’d ended up in.

But that was _impossible –_

But the _timelines –_

And the _ages_ –

But it was so _clean_ in here, he thought dimly.

Dick was so _young._ Even counting in the time after he'd died and the time he'd spent with the All-Caste, this Dick was young. _This_ Dick was sixteen. This Dick was younger than he'd been when Jason had _met_ him.

This Dick was a _kid_.

And there was absolutely no force on any Earth that could stop Jason from finding that absolutely hilarious, so he fell to his knees and laughed 'til his sides hurt.

Jason left the room still clutching his sides and began to make his way down to the vault in the basement. Well. Well that changed things. Robin was Dick Grayson, which meant the Robin in Gotham could easily be the some parallel version of Jason.

Jason had been being ridiculous. Of course Bruce wouldn’t replace him.

 

 

The vault wanted a password. Of course.

This Dick Grayson may not have been his Dick Grayson, but he was close enough. Which meant that he probably still used the same passcode for everything.

Jason laughed under his breath and keyed in the password. The vault’s locks disengaged immediately. _Too easy_.

And there it was.

 _Way_ too easy.

“Sorry, kid,” Jason muttered, easing the suit out of the vault with a wicked grin on his face. “Better luck next time.”


	2. How Much Do You Suck at Subtlety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops.

**TheGreatControlFreak: dude what the heck r u doin**  
**TheGreatControlFreak: u weren’t supposed to bust villains**  
  
**Under_The_Hood: So has the student surpassed the Master, or**

**TheGreatControlFreak: the student has BETRAYED the Master  
TheGreatControlFreak: i never should have trusted you you were supposed to be evil**

**Under_The_Hood: I know right, where do I get off being morally righteous**

**TheGreatControlFreak: this is totally against the villain code**

**Under_The_Hood: Lying is against the villain code  
Under_The_Hood: Who’d have thought it**

**TheGreatControlFreak: wait**  
**TheGreatControlFreak: so you ARE a villain**  
**TheGreatControlFreak: i have to update your villains.viki page**

_Under_The_Hood has disconnected_

**TheGreatControlFreak: STOP DOING THAT**

 

Look, he hadn’t meant to go joyriding, okay. It was just too good to pass up.

Jason crashed through a window and dropped into a crouch, which accomplished two things at once. One, he cut his knee open. Suit wasn’t as strong as he’d thought. Two, he terrified the hell out of the pair of crooks holding up the bank – stunning them into shock as they stared, wide-eyed, at the guy who was now aiming red shuriken them.

The banker took the opportunity to kick one of the guys in the shin and run.

“Who do you think you are?!” One of the crooks yelled, spinning in a wide arc to aim his gun at Jason. He was practically vibrating, with how much he was shaking.

Red X laughed.

Then he vanished.

The next second he was standing behind the crooks; then he was grabbing them by the necks and slamming their skulls together.

Maybe it was a testament to how far his training had taken him that it only took three seconds to incapacitate a pair of goons where it might have previously taken him a minute or two, or maybe they were just _that_ incompetent. Either way, his short-range ‘porter was possibly the best thing ever, and he’d _missed_ this. The rush that came with all the running and fighting and the deep satisfaction of having _stopped_ a bad guy, having _helped_ people.

These goons were pathetic. The rush lasted a whole ten seconds before Jason was left hollow and hungry for more. He _needed_ more. It’d been a long time since Jason had actually done anything that could be considered ‘good’ (he’d spent his time with the All-Caste meditating and fighting monsters and eating really weird purple insects dunked in spicy fruit juice) and he was actually having a _craving_.

He _needed_ to help people.

He also _needed_ rent money.

Jason really needed to think this one over. It was all well and good to swipe paltry amounts of cash from various people over the city; it was another thing _entirely_ to actually fund himself well enough to function in a whole other world. Unsurprisingly it was impossible for someone who didn’t _exist_ to land a job, and the only way he could really justify his _original_ train of thought (crashing various banks to collect cash) was by tossing side any sense of human moral he actually had.

If there was one thing Ducra had taken great care to drill into him that didn’t have anything to do with mystical mumbo-jumbo it was to never lose sight of his morality, and if Bruce had ever taught him anything it was that civilians are unacceptable collateral in _any_ sense. Jason wasn’t the rowdy street kid breaking into convenience stores in a red mask with a group of thugs anymore, and he wasn’t the scared little boy desperately offering to do _anything_ for _anyone_ to survive. This was the one rule he could stick by.

And it was then that he had an epiphany. An annoyingly late-coming one.

Jason took a moment to revel in the fact that he could stick crooks together with big red gloopy X’s before zapping out of the bank. “Why’d B never give me cool toys like this?” he grumbled.

Actually, it was probably because he’d just sticky-glued some small time criminals to the ground and had absolutely no intention of giving the police anything that could dissolve it when they finally showed up. Who was he kidding? Bruce totally couldn’t trust him with shit like this. Goldie would be stuck to the ceiling more often than not.

Actually, that was a pretty awesome idea. He’d come back to that one. For now, though, he had some crooks to bust.

 

 

‘Some’ crooks turned into ‘a hell of a lot’ of crooks, and soon Jason was cruising down the Californian (or, Alabaman, apparently) coastline, hitting various people and organisations right where it hurt for two very different reasons. One, because it was the right thing to do, obviously. And two, because everyone he hit was absolutely _filthy fucking rich_. Jason figured that stealing from criminals didn’t count, especially considering how most of it was earned. Almost every cent of it was blood money – or, at least the closest this world ever came to it. Weirdly, the villains in this world were _nice_. Well, _nicer_ than Jason was used to. Death was a rarity and the most any hero ever seemed to get dealt was one hell of a pounding, which was good to know.

Jason wasn’t _trying_ to play the hero or anything, and it wasn’t stealing so much as it was basic survival tactics. He was just looking out for number one, and if baddies happened to get busted, then who was anyone to complain?

Now that he thought about it, he’d yet to actually run across any really big players. There wasn’t much to do in this world until he scored the resources to head up to the Himalayas (or possibly S’Aru stopped laughing like an idiot over his hilarious _get Jason stuck in another dimension_ prank and got his head out of his ass and rescued him), so it wasn’t a _bad_ idea to knock out some of the Big Bads, was it?

Not that there were very many that Jason felt the Titans couldn’t deal with themselves. God forbid he admit the Titans had any real degree of _competency,_ but the villains were kinda… bad at being bad.

Example; Control Freak. He was a legit genius that had some _actually goddamn impressive_ technology in his corner. What did he spend his time doing?

Engaging in flame wars about which Titan was better, running forums, cosplaying Starfire and writing really, really bad fanfiction (Jason hadn’t meant to find it, Control Freak had apparently accidentally sent it with the batch of blueprints and damn. He hadn’t needed to read about _Robin’s muscular legs, concealed by tight green tights, strode sensually towards the beautiful alien princess_ , he really fucking hadn’t).

So there Jason’d been, casually walking downtown in Steel City in his civvies and keeping an eye out for anything of interest – i.e. actual criminal – when the earthquake hit.

Jason swore and took shelter in the doorway of a nearby store while the shockwaves ran out – not too strong, but that was unexpected. He was willing to bet _superhuman_ just because of the randomnessof the occurrence – this wasn’t Gotham, metahumans were pretty much all over the place, constantly fucking shit up. Amazingly, it wasn’t illegal.

Someone stumbled and tripped, falling against him as the shockwaves ceased. “Whoa, are you okay?” Jason asked automatically, and the girl that had run into him looked at him with terrified eyes, pushed him aside and kept running. “What the hell?”

It became pretty obvious _why_ she was running when a man shot past, nearly knocking Jason down. Clearly this guy was chasing her for whatever reason, and before Jason cared to think about the hows or the whys he was already following.

Heroes do as heroes will. See a girl getting chased, go rescue her. Rule 10, Chapter 1, How to be a Hero for Dummies. Despite the shit that had gone down lately, Jason apparently still had his copy bookmarked.

At least he kept his X-suit under his clothes. 

…was he really going to call it his _X-suit_?

…

 _That_ was a dilemma for another time. Jason ducked into an alleyway and shed his hoodie, jeans and trainers at high speed before pulling his mask from his backpack, pulling it over his head and dumping everything unceremoniously behind a dumpster and shooting an… x-arang to the top of the nearest building, the connected cord pulling him to the rooftop.

As soon as he hit the roof he rolled and started running; leaping from rooftop to rooftop until the blonde girl finally came back into sight. It was a shame they’d been downtown; there was barely anyone else around to play intervention, and it didn’t look like a damn _hero_ was going to show their face. The man who was chasing her – a broad shouldered guy in all black, face mask included, managed to catch up to her and barrelled into her with his shoulder, knocking her into an abandoned building with a force too powerful for a human.

Jason dropped back down to the ground and peered into the window.

“Who are you?!” The girl was yelling. “What do you want with me? Why are you following me?!”

All excellent questions. The man didn’t answer, raising his hands which then crackled with electricity.

The girl took a step back, and another. “Leave me _alone_!” she shouted, her eyes glowing yellow.

Just at that moment the ground began to shake as another earthquake started, and Jason swore under his breath. He leapt through the open window, the soles of his boots slamming into the man’s back and knocking him to the ground.

Something gave way beneath his feet – something that crunched and crumpled like metal.

The earthquake ceased and the girl looked confused, the yellow fading from her eyes.

“Get going, kid!” Jason threw out as the man got to his knees, completely ignoring the dent in his back, and grabbed Jason by the leg and threw. Jason rolled on his shoulder as he landed, flipping onto his feet, and by the time he landed the girl was long gone. “Alright, creep. Twenty questions time. I’ll go first. Chasing a girl with superpowers across town – why?”

The man didn’t respond. Given he was pretty obviously a robot, Jason didn’t really expect him to.

He vaulted across the room as the man took a swing for him, and Jason activated his teleporter at the last second, vanishing from his range. He reappeared behind the man and swung low, knocking his feet out from under him, and followed up with a heavy kick to the head.

Jason hadn’t fought robots since Gotham, and it was half worrying and half intriguing how their bodies would get bent out of shape with every successful hit. It’d been all organic in All – clearly he’d been spoiled rotten, because while _those_ opponents had been debatably not human, at least they stalled when they were in pain.

Here he had no such luxury, as he was brutally reminded when he took a gutpunch after he’d let loose a kick that would’ve flinched just about any human opponent (or close enough approximation).

That said, he had a _lot_ of new toys – not all of them suitable for testing on humans.

Jason grinned, invisible through his mask, and threw a ruthless electric X.

The effects were immediate and not pretty, the robot’s circuits frying dramatically.

It occurred to him later that it _might_ have been a bad idea to draw attention to himself this way, but at the same time, the thought didn’t really bother him at all.

**_“Who are you?”_ **

“Oh, so now you want to talk?” Jason asked flippantly as the robot crumpled to its knees and lay in a shaking pile. Its chest popped open to reveal a tiny screen, and Jason was intrigued enough to take a closer look.

**_“Oh, it’s only now that you’ve caught my attention.”_ **

Jason immediately stopped, something a little like panic and a whole lot of _‘you’re an idiot’_ hitting him straight in the face.

‘Cause on the monitor was Slade fuckin’ Wilson, and goddamn if he did _not_ sound amused.

...

 

 _So,_ Jason's subconscious helpfully supplied,  _you goddamn fucked up._

 

 

 


End file.
